Royal Bank of Scotland stepped up the pressure on Barclays yesterday by tabling a fresh formal offer for ABN Amro worth €71.1 billion (£48 billion).

RBS and its consortium partners, Banco Santander, of Spain, and Fortis, of Belgium, rushed out an offer for the Dutch bank last night, firing the starting pistol on their bid timetable.

Documents released last night also showed that Fred Goodwin, the RBS chief executive, first held talks with ABN Amro about a deal over two years ago.

As previously foreshadowed, the consortium is offering €66.1 billion in cash and €5 billion in RBS shares for ABN. The offer period will run from Monday until October 5, it said.

Barclays has said that it plans to offer €64.8 billion in an agreed all-share offer but has delayed tabling its bid until as late as August 6 to give it time to introduce a cash element.

The RBS group is seen as the favourite to win ABN because its offer is higher and mostly in cash and because Barclays is reluctant to lift its offer and is under pressure from shareholders not to overpay.

The documents unveiled yesterday also indicated that RBS and Santander first discussed a joint bid for ABN Amro in January of this year. A subsequent meeting was held with Fortis in late March, shortly after Barclays said it was in exclusive talks with ABN.

The consortium banks still need regulatory clearance and approval from shareholders. There is speculation that Fortis shareholders may reject the deal because of the huge amount of capital it needs to raise.

The consortium partners said that they were making the offer through their acquisition vehicle, RFS Holdings, for ABN’s ordinary and preference shares. One adviser to RBS said: “The phoney war is over. We have an offer on the table.”

In the proposed break-up, RBS will take ABN’s wholesale bank and its retail operations in Asia and parts of Latin America. Santander gets the large Brazilian bank and the stake in Antonveneta, of Italy. Fortis picks up the retail banking operations in the Netherlands.

The consortium has abandoned hopes of winning LaSalle, ABN’s US bank, which is being sold to Bank of America. An attempt to stop that deal failed this month when a Dutch court ruled that it did not require approval from ABN shareholders.

RBS said that it expected to squeeze cost savings and revenue benefits of €1.237 billion and €481 million respectively from the deal.

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